


Doors Not Entered

by amusewithaview



Series: Kinkmeme Fills [5]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:27:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen stopped short at the sound of someone – the <i>Herald?</i> - stuttering.  He had been about to enter, needing to discuss some of Leliana’s latest reports with Josephine, but it sounded as if she was…occupied.  He should leave the women to their privacy, he could always come back some other –</p><p>“Oh, come now, Inquisitor,” Josephine said indulgently, “if the question makes you blush <i>that</i> much, then the Templar must have truly been something – some<i>one</i> - special.”</p><p>Or he could stay right there.  For a moment, maybe two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. love that never was

**Author's Note:**

> This is the place I'm going to post all of my Femme!Mage!Trevelyan/Cullen kinkmeme fills…mostly because they'll all be about/involve the same Inquisitorial headcanon. This does not necessarily mean that they're going to be linear, or even that they'll all take place in the same universe, just that they'll all feature Gemma Trevelyan.
> 
> Gemma Trevelyan, is the supremely shy, bookish, why-yes-I-would-have-lived-my-whole-life-in-a-Circle-and-been-fine-why-do-you-ask, virginal Inquisitor that I am using to fill these kmeme fills. If there are any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments and I'll try and get back to you ASAP.

“Maker,  _no_ , wh-why would you ask me something like that?”  
  
Cullen stopped short at the sound of someone – the  _Herald?_  - stuttering. He had been about to enter, wanting to discuss some of Leliana’s latest reports with Josephine, but it sounded as if she was…occupied. He should leave the women to their privacy, he could always come back later –  
  
“Oh, come now, Inquisitor,” Josephine was saying indulgently, “if the question makes you blush  _that_  much, then the Templar must have truly been something – some _one_  - special.”  
  
Or he could stay right there. For a moment, maybe two.  
  
The Herald sputtered, denials spilling from her lips in a rush, then trailing off. Cullen could easily picture their Ambassador’s expectant face: the slight lift of brow and quirk to her mouth that somehow communicated polite, expectant interest and bull-like tenacity simultaneously. He was not at all surprised when the Herald gave in.  
  
“It was a childish infatuation,” she finally admitted. “Truly, it never went any further.” The Herald sighed, and he could picture her, too, the way she looked to the ceiling when she gathered her thoughts, baring her long, smooth throat. “He was…” the Herald sighed, “he was like something out of an old tale: handsome, kind, always courteous with us. An older knight, but not so old that the lyrium had started to take him. I had a handful of conversations with him before Ostwick fell.”  
  
“Conversations?” Josephine prodded.  
  
“About literature, actually. My parents were able to send me things, sometimes. It was almost always something educational, or scholarly, but occasionally one of my siblings would manage to slip something a little less dry into the parcels. He caught me out past curfew, reading in the library, and wanted to know what was so interesting that it made me miss the bells.”  
  
“For someone you had such limited contact with, he seems to have left quite the impression.”  
  
Cullen quite agreed.  
  
The Herald sighed explosively, “I am not explaining myself very well. We rarely spoke, but he was just so… He was everything good about the Templars, everything that mages and non-mages alike hold up and admire. Even if he had been ugly as sin, who he was and how he behaved would have been enough to make him handsome.”  
  
“I take it he was  _not_  ‘ugly as sin?’” Josephine asked dryly.  
  
“Maker,  _no_ , he was one of the handsomest men I’d ever seen,” the Herald laughed.  
  
Cullen’s hands clenched around the report until the paper made faint crackling noises as it crumpled.  
  
“What happened to him?”  
  
There was a long pause. Cullen found himself taking a small step forward, leaning in towards the door to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.  
  
“Lady Trevelyan?”  
  
“They say that the Circles  _fell_ ,” the Herald said after a moment, and the way her voice had gone thick made Cullen want to walk away, or perhaps push the door open and interrupt, distract them, anything to be rid of that  _tone_. “Ostwick fell in truth. Not all of the Templars wanted to… _annul_  us, but the infighting between the two groups gave us warning. The Enchanters focused on getting the youngest apprentices out, but some of the older apprentices were foolish, they overreached themselves and, well, the fighting damaged the foundations. The whole structure collapsed. I had only passed my Harrowing a few weeks prior. There were a lot of us being rushed through, the Templars and the older Enchanters wanted as many of us Harrowed as possible, Maker knows why. I led the second group of children out…the  _last_  group.”  
  
“Lady Trevelyan, I – I am so – “  
  
“It’s fine, Lady Montilyet.”  
  
“Please, call me Jospehine.”  
  
“Josephine, then. To answer your question, though – the Templar died in the fighting. He was defending us against his fellows, though I’ll never know if he was killed by Templar sword or Circle magic.”  
  
“He sounds like he was truly a paragon,” Josephine said.  
  
“Yes,” the Herald said, “I doubt I’ll ever meet another like him again.”  
  
Something in Cullen’s chest twisted violently.


	2. the dance that could have been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loosely based off a kmeme prompt asking for a jealous Inquisitor to defend her man from the his hordes of admirers at Halamshiral. That's…not really this Quizzy's style, so here, have a super romantically awkward Quizzy using Vivienne's teachings to lay a verbal smackdown on the lord who _dares_ disrespect _her_ Commander!

“…and Inquisitor?”

Something about the way Leliana’s mouth was twitching up at the corners had Gemma tensing. “Yes?”

“Consider checking in with the Commander before you continue your search,” the redhead advised.

“I…will do that, then,” Gemma agreed, then hurried away before Leliana could elaborate and throw in a thinly-veiled tease about the Inquisitor’s _monumental_ , extremely _ill-advised_ , and, above all, tragically _obvious_ crush on the head of the Inquisition’s armed forces. If Gemma had possessed a copper for every time the spy mistress had encouraged her to ‘go for it,’ the Inquisition would never lack for funding again. It was not cowardice that prevented her from making her feelings known, assuming, that was, that the Commander was somehow _unaware_ of the source of her inability to construct a coherent sentence in his presence, more a keen sense of propriety drummed into her head over the course of years under her mother’s, and then her Circle instructors’, stern tutelage.

A lady of House Trevelyan was not to make the first advance.

A Circle Mage was _never_ to look at a _Templar_ with affection.

And, though it was possible this was her opinion alone, the Inquisitor should not do anything that might cause dissension in the ranks. Gemma could not think of anything more awkward for the command structure of the Inquisition than for one member to make unwelcome feelings known to another. She supposed that there was always the possibility that her feelings _wouldn’t_ be unwelcome but, well, that was about as likely as Corypheus entering into the elves’ Uthenera. Commander Cullen might not be a Templar any longer, but he had been one first at Fereldan, then in Kirkwall. He had seen nothing but the worst of her kind. Privately, Gemma thought it was a miracle he’d stayed with the Inquisition after she’d recruited the mages; she had no wish to test his loyalties, or patience, again.

Still, she gamely headed in the direction she’d seen him last, expecting to find him conversing with Varric, or perhaps Vivienne. Instead, she found a sea of colorful silks and brocades and, at its center, the Commander – looking more flustered than she’d ever seen him, and she _was_ including that incident where she’d begun by inquiring about his family and somehow _ended_ by asking if he’d taken vows of celibacy.

There were _reasons_ she took pains to avoid him, and none of them had anything to do with his being a former Templar.

“Commander,” Gemma greeted as she carefully picked her way through the flock of Orlesian beauties.

“Inquisitor!” the relief in his eyes was almost as attractive as the faint touch of pink in his cheeks. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Ah, no, not precisely. I was just…checking in?” Gemma found herself flushing under his warm golden gaze. She should never have listened to Leliana, she should have left him to his admirers, she should have _at least_ waited until she had a _reason_ to greet him before coming over. “How are you…finding the ball?” she asked, for lack of anything else to say.

Luckily, the Commander mistook her simple question for a more serious probing into the state of affairs: “This is not my preferred battlefield,” he said, one corner of his mouth – the side with that oddly entrancing scar – lifting into a crooked smile, “but it seems that the knives are out, tonight. Please, be careful, my lady.”

Gemma tried very hard not to visibly react to being called _his_ lady, even if she knew he meant it in a general sense, and not in the very specific way that she would have preferred. “Thank you, Commander,” she said, nodding, “I shall be as careful as the circumstances allow.” Then, because she could not think of any other reason to prolong her stay, “If that’s all, then I shall – “

One of the gentlemen had pressed closer to them during their brief conversation, and suddenly the Commander was flinching away from the man and towards Gemma, expression one of shock. He spun about, presenting her with an _excellent_ view of his broad back in the Inquisitorial dress uniform, then said something that drove all appreciation from Gemma’s thoughts like Druffalo before a Mabari.

“Did you just…pinch my _bottom?_ ”

Gemma gaped in shock and growing outrage: how _dare_ he!

“I am a weak man,” the lord said in a placating and _not at all apologetic_ tone.

She neatly sidestepped the Commander and put herself between him and his admirer. Closer, she recognized him as one of the minor lords of the Brielle province, and mentally thanked Vivienne for her tireless training. “My lord,” she said quietly, drawing on months of instruction from Josephine, Dorian, and all of the more politically and socially astute members of her inner circle in order to appear composed instead of murderous, “you should be more careful. Such _weakness_ could so easily be seen as disrespect, both for one of the leaders of the Inquisition and for the Inquisition itself.” Gemma could feel her magic bubbling up alongside her anger and was unsurprised to hear a subtle crackling noise as sparks danced over her skin: “Perhaps,” she continued silkily, recalling one of the whispers she’d heard earlier, “you should see to your lady wife, she has expressed a certain _weakness_ for Fereldan mead. It would be _such_ a shame if your house’s _indiscretions_ were noted by those with influence on high.”

Gemma had the distinct pleasure of seeing not just the little lord’s face, but also several _others_ in the Commander’s flock, go white. Under her gimlet stare, they quickly excused themselves and scurried off. She was extremely satisfied with her actions until she turned back to face the Commander, and saw the look of shock on his face.

“I, oh. I’m so sorry,” she blurted, ire quickly subsumed by mortification, “was that – did I overstep?”

The Commander was looking at her as if he’d never truly seen her before. It was deeply disconcerting. “I - no, my lady. In fact, you have my thanks. It was getting rather difficult to _breathe_ and, ah,” he flushed, “that was _not_ the first time one of them has expressed that particular, ah, _weakness_. If there’s anything I can do – I mean, obviously I will do all I can – Maker’s _breath_ …” He coughed, one hand rising to rub at the back of his neck, "What I mean is - you have my _personal_ thanks, my lady." The Commander offered her a warm smile, "If there's anything I can do for _you_ , to return the favor…?"

“Um, perhaps a dance?” Gemma offered, slightly dazed by his regard. “Later, I mean. Once everything is…fixed?”

He smiled at her, that lopsided smile that made her heart flip over: “I believe that could be arranged, though I am by no means the best dancer in the Inquisition. It would be my pleasure, my lady.”

She nodded, still more than a little thrown: she had _not_ expected this outcome when she'd initially walked over. “So, dancing. We’ll do that. After – yes, _after._ I’m…going to go now, and find the – yes.” She nodded sharply and headed off, almost certain that the warm prickling on the back of her neck was the Commander’s eyes following her and absolutely _sure_ that the bubbling sense of elation was going to ensure that – years of lessons or no – she _would_ be tripping over the Commander’s feet later on that night.

Assuming, that was, that she could find the assassin. First things first, after all.


End file.
